Sampson Way’s Quiet Disappearance

This story originally appeared in the November 2019 issue of San Pedro Today.

On September 8, 1949, Marian Sampson unveiled the new street sign honoring her late husband, C.S. “Bob” Sampson. The dedication of Sampson Way kicked off the third Fishermen’s Fiesta and served as a fitting memorial to the beloved president of the Harbor Commission and a longtime San Pedro businessman who had died suddenly weeks earlier.

Bob Sampson came to San Pedro in 1923 from Minnesota, clerking at the Bank of San Pedro for six years before starting one of the most successful appliance businesses in the Harbor Area. Besides being an astute businessman, Sampson was an affable, civic-minded individual and a member of the Elks, Masons, Kiwanis, and American Legion, as well as a booster for the Red Cross and YMCA.

In 1929, Sampson made an unsuccessful bid to represent the 15th District on the L.A. City Council. When he didn’t make it past the primary, he endorsed his friend and scion of San Pedro’s founding family, Jimmy Dodson. This wasn’t the end of Sampson’s political pursuits. He briefly replaced Eloi Amar on the Harbor Commission in 1938 before Fletcher Bowron cleared the deck at the start of his first mayoral term. Bowron would later appoint Sampson to the Harbor Commission in 1944, where he would eventually be elected president.

Sampson Way was the main thoroughfare into Ports O’ Call, starting in front of the Maritime Museum, running along the parking lots past Utro’s and the fishing slip, and ending at 22nd Street. Last month, after seventy years as a mainstay on the waterfront, the Harbor Department quietly erased Sampson Way and Bob Sampson’s legacy by rerouting Harbor Boulevard onto the road. The switcheroo was part of the final phase of the Harbor Boulevard Roadway Improvements Project, which began in 2016 to improve traffic flow along the waterfront. As part of the realignment, Miner Street was also extended past its terminus at Crescent Avenue to Harbor Boulevard.

This is actually the second extension in Miner Street’s history. The original portion of the street started at 22nd Street and extended south onto the Miner Fill, for which it is named. The name Miner comes from Lt. Randolph Miner, a retired Navy lieutenant and representative for the Outer Harbor Dock & Wharf Company, which lobbied for an outer harbor in San Pedro. In 1906, the breakwater was nearing completion, and most of the harbor operations centered on the interior near Wilmington. Miner and the Outer Harbor company successfully filled 157 acres of land south of Crescent Street. This is the Miner Fill, which includes the land where Crafted and Brouwerij West sit, as well as the large stretch of land that has become a popular concert venue in recent years.

Once the Miner Fill was completed, the town leaders knew a boulevard to the outer harbor was needed. That’s the origin of Harbor Boulevard. The creation of Harbor Boulevard required a land gift from the Sepulveda family because a portion of the bluff below Plaza Park needed to be cut into. Eventually, the road, which started as a project of the city of San Pedro, was completed by the City of Los Angeles. Harbor Boulevard stretched all the way south to Crescent Avenue, where it met the viaduct and made a beeline to the foot of 22nd Street. When the viaduct was demolished in the 1980s, Miner Street was extended from 22nd Street to meet Harbor Boulevard.

Now, Sampson Way is Harbor Boulevard, and the old Harbor Boulevard is now Miner Street. Over the summer, Harbor Commission vice president Dave Arian lost his battle with cancer, prompting Councilman Joe Buscaino to announce that the original stretch of Miner Street (south of 22nd Street) will be named Dave Arian Way.

Dave Arian was an amazing man who worked hard for the harbor communities. He is absolutely deserving of a memorial. I’d argue that so was Bob Sampson, who still has family in San Pedro. If our memories are so short, perhaps a street isn’t the best way to memorialize our fallen leaders. I won’t be here in seventy years to remind everyone who Dave Arian was. spt